In 2019, black and brown journalists will continue to leave predominantly white news organizations that undervalue and underpay for our work. Journalists of color and queer journalists will challenge the value of legacy organizations considered prestige brands who refuse to make room for diverse voices, even as they lift ideas from writers of color and queer culture without crediting them.
We will not apply to “diversity fellowships” that ask a single person of color to do the work of five journalists and an editor. We will call out those news and publishing organizations who brag about their “diversity hires” and we will point to their attrition rates for journalists of color.
We will create our own spaces. We have to. We often do not feel safe in our workplaces, walking an invisible line between job security and self-respect. We will search for ways to thrive, not just survive.
More journalists of color and queer journalists will establish platforms in new and emerging outlets — run by us. Funding mechanisms like Patreon and Pactio will help pay some of the bills.
In 2019, we will still write and delete draft tweets, still ask ourselves: Should I bite my tongue to keep my job, or say something to keep my sanity?
Seema Yasmin is cofounder of the Survival Kit for Journalists of Color and a former staff writer at The Dallas Morning News.
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms